Major Harrison continues. “Pepper says someone was blackmailing her, someone who’d gotten their hands on some photographs I’d taken two years ago—”
“Oh, for God’s sake. You kept photographs?”
“These particular photographs I hadn’t even developed. I’d mailed the film back to her, to her apartment on Dartmouth Street, just before I left for San Diego.”
“Well, it so happens she never returned to that apartment, Major Harrison. She came straight back to New York with me until the wedding, and the movers boxed everything up and sent it to Newbury Street.”
“I see. An inside job, then. It figures. This goddamned family.”
Mrs. Schuyler leans back against the sofa and dangles her arm over the side. A pretty reproduction it is, a genuine imitation Chippendale, upholstered in green and smelling of old roses. The rest of the room follows suit. You might be in a Beacon Hill mansion, except that the furniture on Beacon Hill is the real deal, as old as ancestors. To be perfectly honest, Mrs. Schuyler is just beginning to prefer a cleaner look, herself. Just beginning to get a little impatient with the past, with all the old habits that have come so naturally before. She was born into a family much like the Schuylers—much like the Hardcastles, for that matter, at least the Hardcastles before Granny brought in all that lovely money—and she’s slept on some century-old bed or another since the hour she was born. (At home, of course, because hospitals, like sexual fidelity, were terribly middle-class in those days.) “Don’t worry,” she says. “I can deal with the blackmail later. The point is, why did she break down? There must have been something, something specific.”
“Frank was stepping out on her.”
“Well, of course he was. Did she think he wouldn’t?”
He makes a strange sound, a strangled groan, and whips around with astonishing agility to pound his fist against the wall. Not so hard that it goes through, but hard enough to make Mrs. Schuyler jump on her Chippendale cushion. He growls: “I could kill you all, sometimes. What you’ve done to her. All of you.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
“She just wanted to please you,” he says. “She just wanted you to be proud of her. Just a little bit, that’s all she asked.”
“I was proud. I am proud.” She turns away and stubs her cigarette into the tray, stubs and stubs, long after it’s gone out and turned blurry in her eyes.
“It’s my fault, too, I guess. I never fought back. I never should’ve let you drive away with her. I should’ve broken down the door.” He looks up, toward the door of the waiting room, which is closed. “I should break down her door right now. I don’t believe for a minute she’s sick. They’ve taken her, Mrs. Schuyler. That doctor, Dr. Keene. Pepper says he was at Cape Cod the day before, trying to get her to go away with him. Tiny knows something, and they don’t want her to talk.”
“Knows what?” says Mrs. Schuyler, as innocently as she can, though her heart is beginning to jump now, her heart is launching into her throat at the words They’ve taken her.
What, exactly, does Tiny know?
Major Harrison is staring into his large hands, which fist and flex before him, like the primitive brute he is. Not that Mrs. Schuyler minds a little primitivism, now and again. “I don’t know, exactly. But right before she left for Boston, she was asking me about—”
“About what?” Mrs. Schuyler untangles her long legs and leans forward on the sofa. “About what, Major Harrison?”
“There was an incident at Harvard, the year before she met Frank. Nobody ever talks about it. It was hushed up pretty fast. But I’ve had my suspicions.”
Mrs. Schuyler spreads out her hands, palms down, and stares at her fingers. She’s relieved to see they’re not shaking. Her gloves are still on, her white cotton summer gloves that protect her complexion from the sunshine. Liver spots are so unseemly, such a telltale sign that one’s not as young as one was. That one’s charms are wearing as thin as one’s aging skin. “Have you, now,” she says quietly.
His shoes scrape against the floor. “Why? Do you know something?”
“I know a lot of things, Major. It’s part of my job. Also”—she looks up—“I happen to be dear friends with the ex–Mrs. Franklin Hardcastle, Senior. Tiny’s mother-in-law.”
“Aunt Liz?”
“Oh, you know her name, do you? Yes, she was exiled to New York, as you’ll recall. She lives a few blocks down. We have lunch. She’s a lovely woman. A better woman than I am, not that I mean to damn her with faint praise, as the saying goes.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“Yes, so you see, I believe it’s rather important that we—”
The door swings open and hits the opposite wall with a soft bang.
“Mrs. Schuyler!” exclaims Frank, darting across the rug to take her hand. At the same instant he touches her fingers, he notices Major Harrison standing next to the wall, tall and silent. His head swivels, not quite sure which to address first: Mrs. Schuyler’s hand or his cousin. “Cap? What are you—” He looks back at Mrs. Schuyler. “I didn’t know you knew each other.”
“Oh, we go way back, the two of us,” she says. “How are you, Frank? How’s my daughter?”
“Better, I think. The sedatives seem to be working, thank God.” He casts another glance at Major Harrison, a glance of weary curiosity. His skin is pallid, his eyes strained. Even his hair has given itself up to worry, lying lank and unpolished against his skull. “She was hysterical before. Hysterical, paranoid, trying to escape. The way she fought those orderlies, I couldn’t believe it. She thinks Dr. Keene wants to murder her. I’ve never seen her like this. I don’t know what to do.”
Major Harrison makes a noise in his throat.
“I’m sorry.” Frank shakes his head. “How do you know each other again? What’s— Is something going on, here?”
Major Harrison swings his fist out sideways to meet the wall. “She’s not sick! For God’s sake! Don’t you see what’s happening? You’re her husband, you’re supposed to take care of her!”
A flush spreads over Frank’s cheeks. “I am taking care of her! What the hell are you talking about? What the hell do you know about my wife?”
“More than you think!”
“What are you even doing here, Cap?” Frank turns to face his cousin and assumes an aggressive stance. His hands turn into fists.
Major Harrison says coldly, “I’m concerned for her. As her friend. As someone who knows what this family is capable of.”
“And what the hell does that mean?”
Mrs. Schuyler rises. “Gentlemen. If you don’t mind, I believe I’d very much like to visit my daughter.”
• • •
Dr. Keene is very, very regretful. “I very much regret that Mrs. Hardcastle isn’t in any condition to receive visitors.” He waggles his unremarkable head back and forth.
“Nonsense,” says Mrs. Schuyler. “This is not a parlor on Beacon Hill. She’s not receiving visitors. I’m her mother, and I want to see her.”
“That’s not possible, I’m afraid.” He rests his hand protectively on the doorknob behind him. He intercepted them only a moment ago, when Mrs. Schuyler was just inches from the door herself, and interposed his slim white-coated body between the two—door and woman—with expert grace, as if he’s been accustomed to these sorts of maneuvers for all of his professional life.
Frank speaks up behind her in a reasonable voice, a politician’s voice, smoothing the way for compromise. “Dr. Keene, surely we can allow Tiny’s own mother to see her. The sedatives seem to have taken effect. She just wants to make sure Tiny’s comfortable.”
“A natural urge.” Dr. Keene smiles. “But in these delicate psychiatric cases, we can’t exercise too much caution. The slightest trigger can set off another episode. Mrs. Hardcastle needs the most absolute quiet right now.”
Abs
olute quiet. You can hear it behind the door, a sepulchral absence of sound. Mrs. Schuyler thinks of her dream, a few nights ago, and a premonition rises up like bile in the back of her throat. She needs a drink to force it back down. Mrs. Schuyler has never liked silence, anyway; she’s deeply mistrustful of people and places that make no noise at all. Sound is life. Silence is the opposite.
Absolute quiet is the absolute worst of all.
She pitches her chin at the old familiar angle and raises her eyebrow in the old familiar way. The actions help to keep her heart steady, her adrenaline in check. “Surely, Dr. Keene, we can bend the rules a teensy half-inch, don’t you think? I’d be most grateful for even the smallest glimpse of my daughter. I promise I wouldn’t disturb her, not a bit.”
For an instant, the flicker of temptation touches his eyes. Then it’s gone. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Schuyler. Perhaps in a day or two, when she’s had a chance to rest. Not that I can make any sort of guarantee, in so serious a case as this.”
“Listen here,” growls Major Harrison.
Frank cuts him off. “Dr. Keene, as Mrs. Hardcastle’s husband, I have the right to make decisions like this—”
“Actually, Mr. Hardcastle, and with all due respect,” says Dr. Keene, still smiling, “that’s not precisely true.”
“Not true? How can it not be true? I’m a lawyer, Dr. Keene, and I know precisely what—”
“As a lawyer, then, Mr. Hardcastle, perhaps you should have taken a little more time to examine the admittance papers before you signed them.” Dr. Keene releases the doorknob, removes his glasses, and wipes them with a handkerchief from his breast pocket. “Your father, who will be paying for her care here, has the power to make those decisions on her behalf.”
“What?” says Frank.
“What the hell?” says Major Harrison.
“That’s impossible,” says Frank. “I want to see those papers. That’s illegal and unconscionable, and I’ll fight you all the way to court if I have to—”
But Major Harrison is already muscling his way past them all, lifting Dr. Keene away from the door as he might remove a potted plant from his path. He grabs the doorknob. It’s locked. Without hesitation, he steps back, raises one leg, and releases a kick of pistonlike strength.
The wood splinters. The door flies open.
The room is empty.
• • •
From the look on Dr. Keene’s face, he’s as surprised as anybody. Mrs. Schuyler takes a grain of comfort in that thought.
Fleeting comfort, because in the next instant, he’s running to a telephone in the hallway and picking up the receiver. She can’t hear the words, though, because Frank is shouting in panic, and Major Harrison has grabbed her hand and tows her down the hall, the opposite direction, toward the back of the building.
Her shoes totter against the slick floor. She gasps out a question—What on earth? or What in the devil?, she’s not sure—but it’s lost in the scramble. They reach the end of the hallway, a T junction.
“You go that way, I’ll go this,” says the major. “Look for Pepper!”
“Pepper?”
“She’s with Pepper! Trust me.” He takes off down the left-hand hallway, and Mrs. Schuyler, too shocked to do anything but obey that commanding officer’s voice, takes off her shoes and runs down the other. The passage is white and empty, lined with doors. Should she check any of them? What in the hell is she looking for, anyway?
Pepper. Pepper and Tiny.
And what does she do with them if she finds them?
She rounds an antiseptic corner and collides with a man’s broad back.
The two of them tumble to the ground. The man grunts in surprise.
“I’m so terribly sorry,” she begins, sarcasm at the ready, and the man turns his face toward her. His hair is graying, his eyes are blue. “Why, Franklin!”
“Vivian!”
His eyes dart to the nearest door, a few feet away. An image flashes back in Mrs. Schuyler’s brain, the instant before she collided with him. He’s got his hand on that knob, he’s closing that door.
She turns her head. “Major!” she calls out.
“Quiet!” Franklin Hardcastle grabs her wrist.
“Take your hand off me!” she snaps, but for once in her life, a man doesn’t obey her. Instead, he tightens his grip, he squeezes her slender wrist, and such is her fury at this ungentlemanly conduct, she jerks her hand away. She jerks with heroic force—she, Mrs. Vivian Schuyler of Fifth Avenue, who lunches at the Colony Club and shops at Bergdorf’s—because her daughters are behind that door, she knows it in her blood, her daughters, and by God there is no cad on earth who can stop her from reaching them.
Hardcastle falls to the floor and lunges for her ankle. She raises her other hand, the one that still holds her shoe with the tall heel, and she bangs him on the head with it, as she might rap an impertinent dog with a newspaper.
In her maternal rage, she must have got him good, maybe found his eye with a righteous stiletto. He falls backward, and she reaches for the door and flings it open.
A small room appears before her, an office of some kind, and in the chair slumps a delicate-boned woman in a white nurse’s uniform. Her head rests on the desk, cradled by her arms.
“Tiny!” Mrs. Schuyler darts forward, and something heavy crashes into her side. She sprawls to the floor.
“Mums?”
Mrs. Schuyler grabs her upper arm and looks up indignantly. “Pepper?”
“What are you doing here?” Her middle daughter, dressed improbably in a white nurse’s uniform, drops a metal chair on the floor.
“Help me up, for God’s sake! Is she all right?”
Pepper’s hand closes around Mrs. Schuyler’s upper arm, which is white with pain, and hauls her upward. “She’s fine! She’s just high. I don’t know what the hell they gave her, but it doped her into seventh heaven. I found a couple of nurses’ uniforms in the staff closet and managed to sneak into her room when they left with the drugs, the grand escape plan, but not soon enough. I had to drag her down the hallway, and fucking Hardcastle found us. Hit me, the bastard.” She rubs her cheek.
Mrs. Schuyler rounds the corner of the desk and touches her daughter’s white back. Behind them, the August light strikes hard against the Venetian blinds. The room smells stuffily of old wood. “Tiny? Oh, darling. My God, that bastard—”
A thump interrupts her. Tiny lifts her head. “Mums?”
In the doorway, Hardcastle is struggling with someone, a broad-shouldered someone, for whom he’s no match at all. An instant later, he drops back to the floor. Major Harrison muscles past him and staggers around the desk to kneel in front of the floppy Tiny and take her hands. “Jesus. Is she all right? Tiny, talk to me.”
“Caspian. Darling.” She smiles. “Why are you so pink?”
He turns his head to Hardcastle, who has grasped the doorframe and is launching himself to his feet. “I’m going to fucking kill you,” he says.
“Are you threatening me?” Hardcastle says.
“Right after I get her out of here, I will physically rip you apart—”
“And what are you going to do with her, hmm? You can’t get her out of here. There are reporters everywhere. A guard in the lobby. She can’t leave here without my signature.”
Tiny turns her sleepy head to her father-in-law. “You, sir, are a jackass,” she says, “and I want a—a what-do-you-call-it—”
“Divorce?” says Pepper.
Tiny smiles like an angel. “Yes! Divorce. And then I will kill you and feed you to Percy.”
Mr. Hardcastle throws up his hands. “You see? She’s gone straight out of her mind. She’s staying right here.”
Mrs. Schuyler straightens, pulls off her gloves, and fixes her eyes on the trickle of blood smearing the orbital bone of Hardcastle’s left eye. “She hasn?
??t gone out of her mind. She’s fighting you back, you old bastard, and I’m proud of her.”
“She’s nuts, and she’s staying right here.”
“I’m her mother. I’ll walk right out of here and explain to those reporters what you’re doing, and, by God, your precious son will never be elected to so much as the sanitation board.”
“No, you won’t,” he says. “Because if you try to take her, if you think for one instant you can remove my daughter-in-law from this clinic, you should know I’ve acquired a set of photographs from a certain young lady in the campaign office—”
“Dad?”
Hardcastle turns.
Frank stands in the hallway, just outside the door. His blue eyes are wide and white rimmed; his hand presses against the edge of the doorframe, as if it’s the only thing holding him up.
“Frank—” Hardcastle begins.
“Dad, what’s going on?” Frank’s voice is calm, if a little higher-pitched than usual. A little uncertain, for once in his life, of the ground beneath him. “What do you mean, photographs? From Josephine?”
Hardcastle inhales long and loud: a parent about to explain things to an exceptionally young child. He speaks soothingly. “Your wife is sick, Frank. She’s had a breakdown. She—”
“Is that true?” Frank shifts his gaze to Mrs. Schuyler, to Tiny, and to Major Harrison, who has risen to his feet and placed a protective hand on Tiny’s shoulder. “Cap? Why are you here? Dad?” He turns back to his father. “Why can’t we just take Tiny home now? Why do we need to lock her up here?”
“Son—”
“Tell me, Dad. Tell me what’s going on here.”
Pepper interrupts in a fury. “Oh, I’ll tell you what’s going on here, Frank Hardcastle,” she says. Valiant Pepper. She’s holding her cheek with one hand, her fierce heart in the other. The nurse’s cap lies upside down on the floor, by her feet.
That cheek will need ice, Mrs. Schuyler thinks. Where are they going to find ice? She curls her arm around Tiny’s shoulders, touching Major Harrison’s hand on the other side. Her scarlet manicure against his neat soldierly fingernails. The premonition is rising again, but this time it doesn’t taste like bile. It has a saltier taste, the taste of pity.